Brain Research

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph From the Frontiers of Brain Science

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that the human brain remains fixed after early childhood, subject only to deterioration. Children with mental limitations or adults suffering from brain injury can never hope to attain brain normality. Not so, says Doidge, a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at Columbia University and the University of Toronto. In this book, he outlines the emerging concept of neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Through numerous case studies, he describes stroke victims who have learned to move and speak again, senior citizens who have sharpened their memories, and children who have raised their IQs and overcome learning disabilities, among others. The science, he predicts, will have ramifications for professionals in many fields, but especially for teachers of all types. Oliver Sacks, a well-known neurologist and the author of the book Awakenings, calls Doidge’s work “a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.”

Church and State

Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t

Religion plays a role in nearly every domestic- and international-policy decision made in the United States, but Americans are largely ignorant when it comes to the basic tenets of religious faith, laments Prothero, who chairs the religion department at Boston University. He recounts how schools went from being sites of religious instruction to places where the subject is shunned, in large part, he argues, through the efforts of the very religious. Citing such statistics as that only 10 percent of American teenagers can name all five major world religions, he calls for religion to be given equal standing with reading, writing, and arithmetic as a fourth R in the high school and college curriculum. The goal should not be to inculcate virtue or promote religiosity, Prothero explains, but to prepare students for effective citizenship, and he describes how this can be done in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court rulings. He also includes, in the style of E.D. Hirsch Jr., a lengthy “Dictionary of Religious Literacy” defining more than 150 religious terms, beliefs, groups, and places commonly referenced in public debate.

Diversity

Widening the Circle: The Power of Inclusive Classrooms

For Sapon-Shevin, a professor of inclusive education at Syracuse University, “inclusion” goes beyond bringing students with disabilities into regular classrooms to mean the complete integration of children with differences—physical, ethnic, linguistic, economic, academic, and so on—as a matter of social justice. Just as a dinner-party host would plan a menu carefully and not expect vegetarian or lactose-intolerant guests to pick at dishes, so too should schools be designed so that all students can participate equally and have their needs met, she writes. Properly executed inclusion, she asserts, aids even “regular” students; indeed, she argues, “it is only within inclusive schools that anyone can become a fully loving and competent human being and citizen.” In setting forth her vision for such schooling, Sapon-Shevin addresses educators’ doubts, offers strategies for overcoming obstacles, and provides examples of classrooms where she sees its successful implementation. Inclusion, she maintains, is more than just a pleasant idea; it is necessary for nothing less than “the survival of a democratic society.”

The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies

History

Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation

Fifty years ago this coming September, Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas deployed the state’s National Guard to prevent nine African-American students from attending Little Rock’s then all-white Central High School. At the time, Jacoway, now a scholar of Southern history, was a student in Little Rock and the niece of its superintendent of schools. But, she writes, she was “shielded purposely” from the crisis, and did not come to understand its importance until she entered graduate school. This book, a chronicle of the events that unfolded in Little Rock, stems from her ongoing desire to make sense of that turbulent period, the participation of her relatives and family friends, and her own childhood obliviousness. Drawing on 30 years of research and interviews with many key players—including Faubus; five of the Little Rock Nine; Daisy Bates, a civil rights activist and the students’ adviser; and Harry Ashmore, a journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials on the conflict—Jacoway presents a comprehensive view of a pivotal moment in both national and education history.

Four Days to Glory: Wrestling With the Soul of the American Heartland

Two high school seniors from rural Iowa—the capital of high school wrestling—attempt the rare feat of becoming four-time state champions in this book lauded by reviewers as wrestling’s Friday Night Lights.

The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses Who Make Up America’s Top High School Chess Team

Planet Earth: As You’ve Never Seen It Before

A companion to the Discovery Channel/BBC nature miniseries (scheduled to begin its U.S. broadcast March 25 on the Discovery Channel), this coffee-table book contains more than 400 photographs of wildlife and landscapes from around the globe. A selection of images can be viewed at www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10815/10815.gallery.html.